*

252

| House were remarkable for their honesty, independence,
and originality; and it seemed that a career was before
him useful to his country and in the highest degree
honourable to himself. To use his own striking words,
“ Real life is not dinner-parties and small talk, nor even
| croquet and dancing.
you into the world to do, in order that, by cultivation,
your capacity for benefiting your fellow-creatures may be
increased.” Unhappily his health broke down. He was
about to visit America, when his physicians said that he

Australian voyage. He elected to go to Melbourne,
hoping that he should be able to study questions con-
nected with colonization and emigration. The voyage
did not suit him, and he unhappily died within ten days
after his arrival.
and speaks of “the many proofs offered to every reflecting
mind that the poor are blessed indeed, and that theirs is
| the kingdom of heaven. You never hear the poor com-
| plain of the weather; if you remark upon it they say,
‘Well, it’s as God sends it.’ They ‘take suffering and
humiliation as their proper lot, and really look forward
with hope and trust to the event from which the nch man
recoils in horror.’ There is a certain immaturity, per-
haps, about Mr. Denison’s views, but he gave real help
to the elucidation of a question which at the present time
is one of the most important of the day; and a life so
pure, disinterested, and laborious, is eminently fruitful
in noble lessons.

From this modern biography we pass to one of those
“sweet and serious ” divines of the seventeenth century,
and indeed we touch no separate chord in doing so. The
difference of two centuries only reveals a similarity of life
and feeling. Mr. J. E. B. Mayor has performed many
useful, modest services to English literature, but perhaps
not even the “Life of Nicholas Farrar,” is superior in
interest to his new edition of “ Bedell’s Life” by his son.
The Life is now published for the first time from the
Tanner MSS., and Ma. Mayor promises us a set of notes
which we should have been glad to have seen incorporated
with the present work. Sit anima mea cum Bedello, is
the well-known exclamation of a good man, and one
which good men will desire to re-echo.. A singular con-
Junction of circumstances united Bedell and his great
contemporary, Bishop Hall,
Emmanuel College; each settled down in Bury St.
Edmund's; each had a comfortable helpmeet found for
him; each went abroad with a great man to foreign
parts; each failed to get on well with the squire of his
parish, and when each left the “ sweet and civil” county of
Suffolk, each had the distinction of being the poorest
bishop—Hall in England, and Bedell in Ireland. Bedell’s
bishopric of Ardagh, which he held with Kildare, was
only a hundred a year, but in days when that sum went
immensely farther than it does now; and he hastened to
relieve himself of it, that he might not be a pluralist, nor
permit pluralism in others. The Church of Ireland was
| then at its lowest point. There were only five churches
in good repair in the whole diocese; the rest “were all
ruined so as scarcely the walls were left standing in some
places.” The population consisted of five Catholics to
one Protestant, and in some parishes there was not a
single Protestant except the minister. Bedell told his

Life is doing the work God put |

| must either winter in the south of France or try the |

Mr. Denison intensely loved the poor, |

They were each Fellows of |

|

clergy that “though the people would not hear them
preach, yet it was very fit they should see their good pate one from the slavery cf self. Man enters a new

NOTES ON THE CHIEF BOOKS OF THE DAY.

conversation.” He insisted that his clergy should learn
the Irish language, and would give no man a living who
could not speak Ivish. It is hardly too much to say that
if Bedell’s rule had been generally followed. both Church
and State in Ireland would have fared much better. The
English Government endeavoured to stamp out the Irish
tongue. But Bedell’s answer was that “those people had
souls which ought not to be neglected till they would
learn English.” Bedell being a poor bishop, determined

to live like a poor man, and wherever he went set an

example of simplicity and frugality. He was hardly able
himself to maintain a modest household and show humble.
hospitality. The end of Bedell’s days to the earthly eye
seems dark. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out;
Bedell was ejected from his office, and imprisoned, and
subsequently sickened and died. But the righteous are
held in everlasting remembrance, and

Only the actions of the jus.

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

Mr. Smiles’ new book on “Character” may be re-
garded as another volume like that of his admirable work
“Self-Help,” by which, and by his industrial biographies,
he is so widely and deservedly known. The book is an
immense repertory of telling facts and incidents, and is
characterized by that fine terse, ethical tone in which
Mr. Smiles, at times, almost becomes epigrammatie.
There are a few blunders, such as that which speaks of
the execution of Sir John Eliot, which ought to be cor-
rected in the next edition. The moral is even sounder
than that of “Self-Help,” for the tendency of that work
was to make men think that, by character and ability, they
might obtain great material prizes, whereas such prizes are
not very often won, and perhaps comparative failure is the
more ordinary rule. The sounder moral of “ Character”
is that human success and failure do not, after all, count
for so very much, and that a right-minded man, inde-
pendently of external things, may find happiness in
himself and love from those around him. To give any
full account of Mr. Smiles’ crowded pages would be as
difficult as to classify an index, or abridge a table of con-
tents. It is a book to take up for ten minutes at a time,
and hardly any other work will yield so much anecdote,
observation, and sensible reflections in the same time.
We just take one quotation from Mr. Smiles, which, in
these days of universal novel-reading, may be a kind of
antidote to a great deal of prevalent rubbish :—* Although
Nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs
of love, it might, at all events, be possible to implant in
young minds such views of character as should enable
them to discriminate between the true and the false, and
to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of
moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a
scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to
teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least
be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and

| despicable passions which so often usurp its name. ....

It is by means of this divine passion that the world is
kept ever fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody
of humanity. It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and
throws a halo round age. It glorifies the present by the
light it casts backwards, and it lightens the future by
the beams it casts forward. The love which is the out-
come of esteem and admiration has an elevating and
purifying effect on the character. It tends to emanci-

ee es eee